Skeletons In The Closet
by 26hannah26
Summary: The team investigate when a skeleton is found in a deceased man's closet. It's all very mysterious...I love reviews so R and R please! COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

A/N Hello there my lovelies! This is something I have been working on for a while but just haven't had the chance to put up here yet. I wanted to write something like an episode, and this is how it turned out. Sorry for the ending, I just needed to get that extra bit of information in but at the same time I didn't want to give to much away, if you what I'm saying...But anyway, reviews as always are welcomed!

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**Apartment 15a**

**96 W. 242nd Street**

**Bronx, NY**

**9.17 AM**

"How did he live like this? This place is a pig sty."

"He probably died of some kind of infection – look at this! It's probably been about ten years since this dish saw the sink."

Jimmy Roberts and Richardo Day were used to this kind of situation. It was their job to sort through a lifetime's worth of junk, and sometimes they had to deal with an apartment like this – the kind where the moment that you step inside, you feel like you need to take a shower. To the rest of the Department of Health and Sanitation they were referred to as trumped up garbage men, just because they didn't have to wade around in piles of trash outside. But really, their job was worse sometimes. It was heartbreaking to see how some people were living, even in this day and age. The elderly gentleman who had lived here had done so for about fifty years, and even so, most of his neighbours didn't even know his name, let alone if he happened to have any distant family.

"I don't think he's gonna have any cash just laying around here. He don't even got a TV."

"Then he goes to the Field with the rest of 'em." Jimmy said, with the harshness that came with so many years on the job, whilst rifling through drawers in the kitchen but just not finding what he needed.

That was the worst part of their jobs. The trash, insects, and decaying food they could deal with (that's what their motto was for – 'thank God for gloves...'), but when some unfortunate old guy ended up in an unmarked pauper's grave, it was sort of heartbreaking. Richardo just imagined his own grandmother in Ecuador, dying all alone and then being thrown into a hole in the ground on Hart Island with about twenty other people, then finally being buried by convicts from Riker's Island. It was hardly a dignified way to leave the planet, but the only thing they could do about it was either find enough cash here to pay for a proper funeral, or to find the poor bastard's family so they could pay it themselves.

"Rick, go check the closet in the bedroom, if it were me that's where I'd keep my valuables."

**10.24 AM**

About an hour later, Jimmy was finished in the main area of the apartment, and went to join his partner in the adjoining room. All of the boxes that had been stacked on the shelf in the closet on the far wall had now been turned out on the floor, their contents unceremoniously deposited in various heaps.

"Anything yet?"

"No. Help me get that suitcase there, would ya?"

The two men stepped forward and grabbed hold of the suitcase at either end. They pulled it out into the middle of the small room, furnished only with a bed and a side table with a Bible on top of it, and dropped it down. It settled with a light thud, and they heard the contents shift inside.

"Let's hope we get lucky." Jimmy said, pulling the zip all the way around the edge until they could open it fully.

"Holy crap..."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Apartment 15a**

**96 W. 242nd Street**

**Bronx, NY**

**2.41 PM**

Mac Taylor walked into the apartment, just as Jimmy and Richardo had done five hours earlier, carrying his kit in one hand and his suit jacket in the other. The smell hit him immediately – a decomp in an enclosed space was one of the worst cases to get, and in the summer heat it was doubly unbearable. His presence was acknowledged by Detective Flack, who informed him of what had happened.

"These two guys from DOHS were going through some old guy's apartment – his name's Anthony Bridges, I think – and they come across a skeleton, in a suitcase, in his closet. I'll leave the jokes to you."

"It's a shame we can't talk to Mr Bridges. We could all be home before dinner that way." Mac was meant to be meeting Peyton for dinner, but he had the feeling that, yet again, he would be cancelling and attempting to make it up to her tomorrow.

"As far as I can gather from the building manager, no one complained of any nasty smells coming from in here before now, except for the normal 'old man' smell. Bridges had been housebound for about twenty years prior to his death, so I really don't see him going out and killing some random person on the street. Had to be someone he knew."

"Any relatives we can talk to?"

"That's what these guys were here for," Flack replied, pointing to where they were standing, telling the other officers everything that they had found. "All they got was a photo of some kid that looks like it was taken in the seventies, with 'Ronny, 1972' written on the back – could be his son, could be whoever's in the suitcase. This probably isn't something they're gonna forget in a hurry"

"They have the same job as us, really. We're all just trying to find out a bit more about each person, because we know the tiniest detail can make all the difference." Mac said, and he bent down to get a better look at the skeleton. He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, put them on, and reached into the suitcase.

"Whatcha got there?"

"Looks like little scraps of fabric. I'll know more once we get everything back to the lab."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Crime Lab – Lay Out Room**

**157 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**4.07 PM**

Stella swept a brown curl out of her eyes, and continued to process the items from the suitcase. So far she had removed a 1977 quarter, a blue and purple patterned scarf, some pieces of sparkly fabric, and a few strands of red hair. She would have to stop soon, anyway, so she could meet Mac at the Medical Examiner's office, but she needed to go down there with as much information as she could so they could narrow down the time line. If they couldn't identify whoever's remains it was from the body itself, then they would need all the information from elsewhere. It was quite frustrating at this stage, before they really knew anything that could lead to a name. She began drumming her fingers on the counter where all of the evidence was spread out in front of her, and stared straight ahead, as if the answer she was looking for was written there.

"Hey! Danny!"

He had been walking past the lay out room where she was working, folder in hand, and when she called out to him he stopped and gaped at her from the other side of the glass wall. She sighed and motioned for him to come in to where she was.

"What's up, stell?"

"Did you get the DNA results?"

"Yeah, there is no relation to Mr Bridges and no matches in CODIS. There's a detective from Missing Persons coming over to help us out with a reconstruction. They might be able to match the reconstruction with a photo from a Missing Persons report."

"Good, I don't really have anything probative from the suitcase."

"Give it time. Once we get this guy a face, we can get it in all the newspapers and on TV. Someone will know something."

"In the meantime, why don't you see if you can get anything off these hairs," she said handing them to him. "See if they belong to someone else, or maybe if there's a hair product on them. Anything we can use."

"Will do." His pager beeped, he excused himself, and then he left in the direction of the elevators. Stella sighed again, and continued to absent-mindedly drum her fingers on the counter.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Crime Lab – Trace Lab**

**157 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**4.14 PM**

"Adam, have you got those results from the sparkly fabric for me?" Lindsey asked, closing the door to the lab behind her and stepping in the room.

"They're still pending." he replied bluntly, looking up from his microscope briefly before lowering his head again, and going back to what he was doing.

"Well how about prints from the quarter?"

"Nothing, any prints inside the suitcase would have been removed or degraded when the body decomposed. I did tell you it was a long shot."

"I know, but we had to give it a shot, right? At least we tried. What's up with you, today?"

"Why do you think the old guy kept the body?" Adam asked, after a few moments of silence.

"I have no idea. I've heard of killers keeping a souvenir from the crime scene, or even taking a lock of hair or a vial of blood from the victim, but this is a little extreme." She thought for a moment. "Or maybe it wasn't his suitcase."

"Well then whose was it?"

"I don't know, I'm just speculating. It's unlikely that he didn't know the whole suitcase was in there, because he hadn't left the house in twenty years, so no one could have just hidden it in there while he was out. But maybe he was just looking after the suitcase for someone he knew."

"And he didn't think to look inside?"

"Who knows, Adam." she sighed, opened the door, and called back over her shoulder, "Page me when you get those results, OK?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Hot Dog Stand**

**Corner of E. 48th Street and Fifth Avenue**

**Manhattan, NY**

**4.37 PM**

"_Taylor."_

"It's Flack. I found out a little something about Anthony Bridges' apartment building."

"_Go ahead."_

"Turns out in the late seventies it was a pretty seedy area, and was mainly frequented by prostitutes and crack addicts. So I'm thinking our guy could be a pimp or a junky."

"_Whoever was in the suitcase could have only died a year ago. The quarter doesn't necessarily mean anything, except maybe either the victim or the killer had a coin collection. It could have been thirty years ago, but we don't really know when the murder took place."_

"It's a start. A lot of residents from that period still live there, so I'm going to do some more asking around once we get a face for the vic. See if someone remembers anything useful."

"_OK, I'll talk to you later."_

Flack hung up, paid for his hot dog and continued walking down the street towards the lab.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N Hello anybody who happens to be reading this! This is, as you probably can tell, chapter two. It hasn't really got interesting yet but give it a chance. R and R please and thank you!

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**Medical Examiner's Office – Autopsy Room Three**

**159 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**5.05 PM**

Sid was busy preparing another body for autopsy, so he didn't hear Mac and Stella when they came into the morgue. They waited patiently for him to turn around, but he continued working, humming under his breath. It sounded like 'Stairway To Heaven', but only if you listened really hard and filled in the parts he was leaving out. On the other hand, it could have been something completely different.

Mac cleared his throat, and rolled his eyes when he still didn't get a response. He tried again, louder this time, and finally Sid turned to greet them.

"Ah, you're here just in time, I was just finishing up."

"So what can you tell us about this guy?" Stella asked.

"Girl, actually. There was an element of 'human soup' to her, but the bones tell us that she was a Caucasian female, somewhere between twenty and forty years old. Approximately five feet and four inches tall. Cause of death looks like strangulation. The hyoid bone's broken," he said, pointing to it. Seeing the exchange of looks between the two detectives, he added, "Don't jump to the murder conclusion just yet, it could have been suicide by hanging, or self-strangulation."

"If it wasn't murder, how did she zip herself into the suitcase?"

"Well I'm not saying she did _that_ herself, I'm just saying that this isn't necessarily a homicide. Perhaps a misguided family member who didn't want the hassle or expense of a proper burial service."

"That still doesn't explain why Bridges was keeping her in his closet. Is there anything else? Anything distinguishing?"

"Facial fractures of the orbital and nasal bones that haven't healed, possibly inflicted shortly before she died, fuelling the murder theory. There was also a healed fracture of the ulna."

"What about the teeth?" Mac asked, a glimmer of hope flashing across his face. Now that they knew the bones didn't belong to the boy in the photo, they were fresh out of leads. He would take all of the information he could get, but sometimes there were cases like this where they never found out who the person was. He just hoped that this wouldn't be one of them.

"They were very well looked after up until she died. She took good care of them, which isn't usually something a drug addict would do. She looks like she had some good dental work done as a kid, but the style of dentistry looks European. I doubt we can get an identity from that."

"Well, put them through the database anyway. When the detective from Missing Persons gets here, hopefully they will have some candidates for us to compare dental records to."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Crime Lab - 22nd Floor Hallway**

**157 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**7.34 PM**

Detective Jenn De Meyo from the Missing Persons Unit walked down the hallway of the crime lab with Detective Flack. They were headed towards Mac's office so she could be briefed on the case. She had been investigating mysterious disappearances for about five years, but before that she had been a regular beat cop. This work was a lot less dangerous, and a lot less tiring, but a lot more stressful. There were days when she doubted she could face going into work the next morning, but it always came down to the same thing – she loved her job. She enjoyed puzzles, and for her, life was just one big puzzle after the next.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Flack asked, interrupting her from mentally going through every case file she had read in the past five years, in the hope of remembering one that could be the woman in the suitcase – she could remember a little bit of every case, because it was her main goal to solve every single one of them, which was verging on impossible.

"I think so." she stopped and looked at him a little more closely. "Were we in the academy together?"

"Oh yeah, I think we were."

"It's Don, right? You dated Marie Costner for a while."

"A total whack job if ever I saw one," he laughed.

"Tell me about, she's married to my brother now."

"That's rough. How've you been?" They carried on walking towards the door at the end of the hallway.

"Pretty good, how about you?"

"This job isn't without it's perils, but otherwise I'm doing OK." he replied, thinking back to being 'blown up'. He still had nightmares, and at one point didn't ever want to come back to work.

They reached Mac's office, and Flack knocked on the door, mainly just out of courtesy before opening it and going in anyway. He introduced Jenn, and they both sat down while Mac told her everything that they knew about the body and the things it was found with. She went through her mental check list once more, crossing off names in her head as he told her something she knew that particular person didn't have.

"The basic time line that we have is that this woman could have died anywhere between one year ago and thirty years ago, based on the quarter we found with her. Danny processed the hairs, they belong to the victim, and they are also coated in a chemical that was found in hair dyes in the mid to late seventies. It was banned it the early eighties, so that means that the time line has decreased – we can definitively say that she died sometime between 1977 and 1980. Is that enough for you to work with?"

"More than enough, Sir. Did you say you needed a reconstruction?"

"Yes, one of my CSIs, Sheldon Hawkes, will show you where to go – he's very eager to learn, so he'll help you out." He smiled. "And don't call me sir."

"Sorry..." she was about to do it again, but stopped herself.

"We also think that the victim may have been a prostitute or drug user, or both. In the late seventies that part of the Bronx was a pretty rough area, so any number of things could have happened to her. Once you've done the reconstruction we can pass it around the people living there that lived there then, too."

"Did you get anything from the suitcase itself?" Jenn asked.

"All we know is that it was made by Fontanelle Leather Goods Company, and that they went out of business in the sixties. It's just a generic suitcase, with no distinguishing features."

"And what about Mr Bridges, could it be his wife or girlfriend...Crime of passion, perhaps?"

"We didn't find anything in his apartment that would tell us if he was married at some point, and his neighbours said he was kind of a loner. He's a mysterious guy – we don't know much about him _or _the victim. If we find out more about him, chances are we will find out more about our vic."

**Crime Lab – Reconstruction Area**

**157 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**8.18 PM**

"Jenn, am I doing this right?" Hawkes asked, as the two of them worked on reconstructing the face of the unidentified woman.

"You're doing great, just add a little more clay to this side of the face."

He did as she told him, and the face began to take shape. They started by cleaning the skull, then filling in the fractures around the eyes and attaching the mandible with wax, and then filling in the nasal cavity with clay. Green prosthetic eyes, based on the colour of the strands of hair found with the remains, were put in place. Jenn then created a plaster cast of the skull. It was Hawkes' job to place the tissue-thickness indicators and then start building up the face with clay. Soon, the finishing touches were added – lips, ears, a red wig, and wrinkles around the mouth. A photo was taken to distribute to local papers and other police stations in the city.

"You recognise her? Does she look like anyone from a case you have investigated?"

"Um...She looks kind of familiar. But then again she looks like someone I saw on the subway this morning. That's the problem with facial reconstructions – some parts don't necessarily match those of the actual person. The nose and ears that we gave her might not even be anything like the ones that she had, so that may make it hard for someone to recognise her. I'm going back to my office when we're done here, so I can cross-reference this photo with photos from case files. Hopefully we'll get lucky."

**Missing Persons Investigation Unit – Office of Det. Jenn De Meyo**

**1822 Jackson Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**9.32 PM**

Jenn set her bag down on her desk, dropped the folders she was holding, and moved across the room the her filing cabinet. She had a few missing women in mind who could be a possible match to the remains, so now all she needed to do was go through them and narrow it down further. She just hoped that someone had actually cared enough about this woman to report her missing. And because this case was around thirty years old, she had to hope that the folder was around here somewhere and was complete, or that it even existed still. The prospect of having to hunt around the NYPD vault, with the old trolls that were too resilient to retire constantly looking down her shirt, was not one that thrilled her.

Having checked her emails and replying to the worthwhile ones after she had filtered out the junk, she sent the reconstruction picture to the main newspapers in the city. Then she picked up her bag again and left her office, locking the door behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Apartment 2b**

**225 47th Street**

**Brooklyn, NY**

**3.41 AM**

He had been having the dream again. The one where he's trapped in the building and can't get out in time, before the explosion. Pretty much every night he wakes up in a cold sweat, breathless, and can't get back to sleep again before the alarm rings, the one that would rouse him if he actually _was_ sleeping. Pretty much every night it woke him – only the nights where he drank so much he passed out were the ones where he slept for at least five hours.

But tonight it wasn't the dream that had woken him (although it would have done sooner or later, that was one thing he could always be certain of), but it was the phone's shrill ringing from his bedside cabinet. He let out a soft groan as he rolled over, limbs slightly tangled in his sheets, to look at the clock – the illuminated numbers showed it was 3.41 on Tuesday morning, exactly an hour after he had come home from work, tired, cold, and soaked almost to the skin from the heavy rain that was still beating down on the windows of his apartment. He was used to getting calls from work at this time in the morning, but they never usually called the house phone. In the dark, he fumbled for the phone and when he felt it under his hand, lifted it close to his face to see who it was calling at this hour. When he didn't recognise the number, he threw it back down on the bed beside him, but the ringing didn't stop. Infuriated that his precious little time devoted to sleep was being interrupted, he answered.

"Flack," his sleep fogged mind answered the way he normally would, and he assumed that the voice on the other end would identify itself as another detective. The was a pause, and as he waited for a reply he flicked on the lamp, illuminating the whole of his small bedroom – the bed underneath him, the wardrobe, the clean suit in the dry-cleaning bag hanging on his door. On his bedside cabinet was his badge, wallet and gun, in the same place they were always put when he got home.

"Hello?" The voice was a woman's, but it didn't sound like anyone's he knew. His mother's voice and his sister's voice were the female equivalent of his, but the one he was hearing now didn't belong to Stella or Lindsey or a police officer he knew and could recall, especially when his brain felt like it had been run through a blender.

"Hello?" he asked back, "Who is this?"

There was another pause, and he considered giving up, hanging up, because he was in no frame of mind to deal with a prank call, especially at this ungodly hour. But then she spoke again.

"Detective Flack?"

"Yeah."

"It's Detective De Mayo..."

"Why did you call my house phone?"

"I didn't have your number, I had to look it up in the phone book."

"Oh." He wasn't really sure what to make of that, whether to interpret it as good police work or crossing the line. Right now, all he knew was that he didn't care, he just wanted to go back to sleep. "What can I do for you this morning, Detective?"

"We may have found a relative of Anthony Bridges. Could be the son in the photo. Want me to swing by and pick you up so we can ask him about his dad?"

"Yeah, give me about twenty minutes."

"Sure thing, I've got some stuff here I need to finish up with."

Don hung up and rested his head back on the pillow. A feeling of tiredness started washing over him once again, enticing him to just close his eyes and go back to sleep. He groaned and got up, heading for the bathroom. Sometimes he hated this job...

**Squad Car**

**225 47th Street**

**Brooklyn, NY**

**4.06 AM**

Jenn leaned over to open the passenger side door for Flack, who climbed in and pulled it closed behind him. He seemed to have perked up a little since she last spoke to him, but she could still see he wasn't exactly thrilled to be there.

"I bought coffee," she said, gesturing to the plastic Starbucks cups on the back-seat. "There's packets of sugar and cream somewhere."

"Thanks."

"The two guys from DOHS helped us out by showing the kids picture round the apartment building. One of the slightly younger residents remembered seeing Ronny about 3 years ago."

"Are they sure it was him? It was a pretty old photo."

"She said Bridges introduced him to her – seemed pretty sure, too. And she said she only saw him that one time."

"Is she one of those women who's constantly attached to her peep-hole?"

"How could you tell?" Jenn laughed. Women like that were always joked about, but they could usually be counted on to provide a strong lead in a case like this. "She said Bridges had told her that Ronny lived in Queens at the time. He was in construction, like his dad."

**Apartment 3B**

**43 Steiner Street**

**Queens, NY**

**4.33 AM**

The sound of Jenn knocking on the apartment door for almost a solid five minutes had caused several neighbours to come out into the hallway.

"What's all this ruckus?" one man asked in a very agitated manner. "It's four in the morning!"

"There a Ronny Bridges that lives here?" Flack asked the man, dressed in a stained wife-beater and even more stained boxer shorts.

"No, Ronny moved out about 16 years ago. The whole building was gutted by a fire. The landlady never said nothin' about it, but we all thought the fire started in his apartment."

"So who lives here now?"

"No one, place has been empty ever since."

"Great." Jenn sighed, turning to her fellow detective. "Another dead end."

**7402 Woodside Ave**

**Elmhurst**

**Queens, NY**

**7.52 AM**

Pulling upoutside the house, the two detectives wondered if they had the right address. Jenn checked her notebook where she had written it down, and then craned her neck to get a good look at the gold numbers nailed to the side of the house. This was definitely the right place. They had both been expecting something a little more... sleazy. What they were faced with, however, was a quaint little pale blue clap board house in a nice neighbourhood. It reminded Flack of his grandmother's place, where he and the rest of his siblings had spent every Sunday. It even had a similar wooden rocker out on the front porch.

They walked up the path to the front door side by side. They had been completely thrown already, so the Lord only knew what they would find when they rang the bell. Before Jenn's index finger could make contact with the metal button, her hand poised and ready, the door opened and they were greeted by a middle-aged woman. Her light brown hair streaked with grey, and her kind face was beginning to be marred by wrinkles.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a strong Brooklyn accent. She held the door slightly closed on them, so only half of her body was visible to them.

"NYPD, Detectives Flack and De Mayo," he said almost robotically, holding his badge out towards her. "Is there a Ronny Bridges at this address?"

"He's at work."

"We're here to inform him of his father's death. May we come in?"

"Tony died?"

"Yeah. When was the last time Ronny saw him?"

"Not since our wedding. That was fifteen years ago. But it's not like he was ever there for Ronny when he was a kid?"

"How so?" Jenn asked.

"His mother left him with Tony. She was a dancer or somethin'. And Tony left him with his own Ma. Didn't want to look after his own kid, you believe that?"

"Where is your husband now, Mrs Bridges?"

"Work. At some construction site."

"Any idea where?"

"No, sorry. Seems to change daily."

"Thanks for your time, Ma'am."

They got back in the car. She hadn't exactly been helpful, but they had learnt something new about Ronny.

**Crime Lab – Office of Det. Mac Taylor**

**157 E. 34th Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**9.34 AM**

"I ran a background check on Ronny's mother," Mac said when they returned to the lab. "She was employed in various Broadway shows until the early eighties. Her new husband knew nothing about her having a son."

"Where is she now?" Stella asked, perched on the side of the desk in Mac's office where the whole team were gathered.

"She died of natural causes about a year ago. Flack,we any closer to finding Ronny?"

"We know where he lives, but we haven't actually talked to him yet. He works construction, but his wife doesn't seem to know where. I think she was lying, by the way."


	4. Chapter 4

A/N Hey! I don't have much to say really, except that I enjoyed researching Rockettes, I don't condone smoking, old women imagining Danny naked is wrong but understandable, and reviews are awesome. That is all.

**Construction Site**

**147 North Jeffers Road**

**Brooklyn, NY**

**11.48 AM**

Flack and Jenn had finally tracked down the illusive Ronny Bridges. It had taken some work, and at one point they were certain that they would have to drive to every construction site in the state, but they eventually found him after speaking with a parole officer whose parolee had got into a fight with Ronny. As they walked past scaffolding and various pieces of heavy machinery, they spotted him sipping something from a white plastic cup by the Port-a-Potties.

"You're a very difficult man to get ahold of, Ronny. Anyone ever told you that?"

"What's all this about?"

"Your dad."

"What about him. I ain't seen him in years."

"I'm sorry to inform you that he passed away."

"When?" he asked, sounding more suspicious than emotional – he had just been told that his father was dead, and he didn't even flinch.

"We think it was a couple of weeks ago."

"Weeks huh? Why you only telling me now?"

"Like I said, you're not easy to find."

"That all? I gotta get back to work." His response caused both the detectives to raise an eyebrow almost simultaniously. Ronny started to walk away, but Flack grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

"You don't want to know what happened?" Jenn asked, stepping in front of him.

"What can I tell you, lady. He wasn't exactly there for me when I was growing up. Can I get back to work now?"

"One more thing. Your dad had a dead woman in his closet, Ronny, you wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would ya?"

"No. You want to ask me anything else, you'll have to arrest me." He said, not even reacting at the troubling information he had just been given.

"Did he seem unduly relaxed to you?" Flack asked, as they walked back to the car.

"Yeah, he didn't seem at all surprised that there was a dead woman in his dad's apartment."

**Missing Persons Investigation Unit – Office of Det. Jenn De Meyo**

**1822 Jackson Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**1.19 PM**

Jenn was just sitting down at her desk with a limp-looking sandwich when the phone on her desk rang. She spun in her chair and reached over to lift the receiver to her ear.

"Detective De Meyo speaking."

"Hey, it's Danny."

"Tell me you've got something."

"I found out something pretty interesting about our boy Ronny. About ten years ago he spent some time in a psychiatric facility – he had some kind of break down when his mother remarried. I managed to subpoena his medical records, which say he was displaying a lot of violence. So then I dug a little deeper."

"And?"

"In the 1976, about a year before the vic was killed, Ronny did a stint in juvie. A hooker stumbled into Bronx PD crying rape, but her story kept changing and there was little evidence so they could only get him on attempted assault. He was sixteen. So it's feasible that _he_ killed the woman in the closet, not Anthony?"

"I'd say so. But we still don't know who she is – I can't find any missing persons report on her. And until we know who she is, we can't prove that they knew each other."

"Alright, I'm gonna go talk to one his mother's relatives, see if I can find out why he went nuts."

"OK, good job, Danny."

**Battery View Senior Citizens Home  
72 Montgomery St  
Jersey City, NJ**

**3.04 PM**

Danny was escorted to a table by the window in the dining room, and sat down opposite an elderly woman. Ronny's aunt, his mother's sister. She was dressed in a very glamorous silk robe, accented by numerous large pieces of costume jewellery, and sipped her afternoon tea from a delicate china cup. She held out her hand to him.

"Mr Messer, I presume. The old bat an the front desk informed me that you were coming." The nurse who had shown him where to sit gave her a look that was half disapproving and half amused, and Danny couldn't help but laugh – he had expected her to be a little more well-spoken, but she spoke with a Long Island accent that clashed completely with her sophisticated exterior. "But she didn't say what you were coming all this way to talk to me about."

"Your sister's ex-husband."

"Ha! Which one, darling? She had more husbands than you've had hot showers." She gave flashed him a wicked grin, no doubt elaborating that statement in her mind.

"Anthony Bridges."

"Well that could hardly be classed as a marriage. Her career took off, he suddenly got very jealous of her success, and then he showed her the door."

"But she left her son with him?"

"Oh, sweet Ronny. He was going to hold her back in the industry."

"The industry? What, like hookin'?"

"Heavens, no!" She suddenly drew her gaze away from his, and looked over his shoulder, her eyes glazing over with nostalgia. "Mr Messer, my sister was a dancer, like me. We both started in a bar in Brooklyn, nothing too difficult, but then I got my big break... Broadway. In the chorus line. And she soon followed."

"Must have been nice. How old was Ronny when she left him?"

"Six or seven. He really didn't need her. Marie's dear mother-in-law took good care of him. But she never approved of what we did for a living. She thought we were 'trashy'. And she poisoned that boy against her."

"How do you mean?"

"She referred to her as 'that whore', and was constantly talking her down in front of him. She used to visit him every Sunday, but it just got too much for her and she never went back. But she always thought about him."

"Did you know about him going into a psychiatric facility?"

"Yes, that was terrible business. He got into such a state, it almost ruined her wedding day. But she and Johnny never fully got over it, and they split up a couple of months later."

**Missing Persons Investigation Unit – Office of Det. Jenn De Meyo**

**1822 Jackson Street**

**Manhattan, NY**

**5.43 PM **

Her sandwich long finished, Jenn came back into her office after a quick trip down to the building courtyard for a cigarette. No sooner had she shut the door behind her, the phone started ringing from her desk. She took her time going across the small square room to pick it up, the way she normally did – good news rarely came from the other end of that phone. A missing sister, a kidnapped child, a lost husband. More often than not, there was nothing she could really do to help.

She held the receiver to her ear and answered. A woman's voice from the other end of the line spoke. "Is this the detective working on the woman in the closet case?"

"Yes, who is this?"

"My name is Jane Tanner, and I think I recognise that poor woman's picture that was in the paper."

"Really. Tell me what you know." She reached over to a stack of note cards and picked one off the top, pulling the lid off a pen with her teeth as she did so.

"Well, in May of 1976 my mother and her cousin, Dana, came to New York City from Kansas. They both had an audition for the Rockettes. My mother didn't make it past the first round, thank God, but Dana did. She moved in October and she called home the first Sunday of the month, like clockwork. But in February the call never came."

"Did you file a missing persons report with the police."

"Well, we tried. The police in Kansas said we couldn't do anything just because she hadn't called. She was 22, they said she was probably out having a good time."

"I can help you now, Ma'am. Where was she living at the time?"

"The Bronx. Accommodation wasn't provided for dancers at Radio City Music hall, and all she could afford was a room in some dive."

"You wouldn't happen to know where this dive was in the Bronx, would you?"

"242nd Street. I remember, because that was my house number when I was a kid."

That was the same street the Anthony Bridges lived on. The time line was right. Dana and the unidentified woman could be the same person.


	5. Chapter 5

**7402 Woodside Ave**

**Elmhurst**

**Queens, NY**

**8.54 PM**

"NYPD!" Mac yelled through Ronny's front door. "Open up!" He turned to the officer beside him and nodded, giving the signal for him to break down the door. But before anything could happen, Mrs Bridges opened it, and stood with her mouth agape at the sight of a dozen police officers with their guns drawn before her in her front yard.

"I called you guys half an hour ago, my husband could be dead because you guys couldn't be bothered to get up off your asses!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Ronny... He called me from work and said he was going to kill himself." She inhaled sharply and a sob escaped from her throat. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she wiped them away roughly. "Whatever it is you think he did, you're wrong. He's a good man..."

"What else did he say?"

"He's gonna jump off the Brooklyn Bridge!" she wailed, grabbing at her shirt. "You have to stop him!"

**Brooklyn Bridge**

**Manhattan/Brooklyn, NY**

**9.24 PM**

"If that bastard jumps, I'm going to be really mad!" Stella yelled to Mac over the roar of the traffic speeding past them, as they got out of their car and ran towards Ronny. They had spotted him leaning against a railing, and now he had seen them getting closer, he hauled himself up and tried to scramble over the metal bars. His shoe got caught, and he tried to kick it off and keep his balance at the same time – he'd had more than a few glasses of scotch for Dutch courage, but he realised that may have been a mistake as it was causing him to wobble. Just as he freed himself and got ready to leap forwards, Mac grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him backwards, the two of them collapsing in a heap on the pavement.

Ronny wasn't ready to give up that easily, and tried to wriggle out of Mac's grip, making his frustration known. Although the detective was smaller, he managed to keep him down on the ground while Stella cuffed his hands behind his back.

"Let me go!"

"Calm down." She said, and she and Mac hauled him up off the ground. "You're going nowhere."

**Interrogation Room Three**

**Police Station**

**357 W 35th Street**

**14th Precinct (Midtown South)**

**Manhattan, NY **

**7.05 AM**

"You sobered up yet, Ronny?" Flack asked as he, Jenn and another police officer walked into the interrogation room where Ronny was sitting at the table, his head resting on it. Jenn held three photos in her hand – one of Dana when she was still alive back in Kansas, sitting on the hood of a white car with her cousin who was lucky to have escaped a similar fate, their shirts tied up at their waists. Another was of the reconstruction, that was obviously her but didn't capture the light in her eyes, the beaming smile, or her personality. The final photo showed what was left of her decomposed body, slung into the suitcase, dehumanised. She slammed it down onto the metal table in front of Ronny.

"Do you recognise her, Ronny? Do you see her every night when you close your eyes? When you go to sleep? When you kiss your wife? For the last thirty-one years, has she haunted you, Ronny?" He just looked at her blankly, and kept his mouth shut. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"

"I don't have anything to say."

"What was going through your mind when you killed this girl would be a start." Flack pulled a chair up to the table and sat down, looking directly at him.

"She was so pretty," he said, running his finger over the picture of her and her cousin. "She was wearing this pair of short shorts with a sparkly top. Someone so pretty shouldn't have gone out lookin' so cheap."

"And so you killed her and left her in your dad's closet?"

"My dad barely noticed my Ma when she was with him. And he acted like he hadn't noticed that had left him. You saw the state of his place. It looked like that thirty years ago, too. And he was always out at motels with some cheap whore, so he didn't even notice that I'd stashed the suitcase there."

"So you gave him a decomposing body to teach him a lesson? So he'd give you the attention that he never gave you when you were a kid?"

"You should have just let me jump, it would be best for everyone! My wife would be better off not knowing what I did!" He held his head in his hands, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him. "My parents didn't want me. My Grandmother didn't want me. I would never have had to go live with that witch if my Ma wasn't so obsessed with herself. Her dream made my life a nightmare. We don't deserve it. I had to stop other girls like her from doing the same thing to their kids... I had to stop them... "

"Them? Were there more women that you killed?"

He was quiet again, his eyes wide, a menacing smile illuminating his features. He looked like he was laying the groundwork for his insanity plea, and given his history he probably wouldn't even see the inside of a cell, just a padded room.

"Answer the question, Ronny."

"What are you going to do for me if I tell you?"

"It might be the difference between life, or life with the possibility of parole. It's up to you."

"None of them died," he said, looking a little disappointed with himself, "They all got up and walked away. But they probably weren't the same again... They learnt their lesson." The unnerving smile returned to his face.

"Get him out of here," Flack said to the uniformed officer, who cuffed Ronny and led him out of the room.


End file.
